Which LP defect annoys you the most?

I didn't know what non-fill was until I heard it on the Reprise Europe reissue of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack; the last song of the album, "Disco Inferno," exhibits this noise a couple of times, and originally I thought the record just needed cleaning (even though it was new).

 

OP has forgotten the "other" option once again.

For me, the most egregious error is, Quality-Control in general, based on the notion that today's vinyl record merchandisers are getting away with charging an average of over three times the MSRP than labels in the days before the CD's ascendancy (nearly 40 years ago, in case you weren't there), for a product that hasn't changed...yet expects the consumer to jump through far more hoops to get satisfaction when they get a bum product.

The other option, which you don't want if you're insisting on analog play, simply does not arrive at your doorstep with the ratio of properly-produced-to-production-error-defects...and still the price of the digital product has actually contracted by a third, since first coming into the marketplace.

The record-store landscape was richer then, and you could just walk into any of perhaps 12 stores in a city the size of a, say, Muncie Indiana, and get some clerk to put your warped piece of crap on the store turntable, and nod his head, and say, "yep, you got a piece of crap". And the customer satisfaction process would commence immediately, mere feet from where you parked your car.

I do not know how the vinyl purchaser bent himself so far backwards that he was willing to put up with this, particularly after the learning process he already has to take himself through, just to get what he considers to be satisfactory equipment for that superior performance he has been sold over the years. I am not about to open the 'cold, cold digital vs. warm, creamy vinyls" debate one more time, but I grew up in an era when the LP was the only option, and the customer was treated a lot better, in both price, and the manufacturer letting less pieces of crap escape from their pressing plants with less frequency.

 

You must be talking about early 90's Jungle. One of my all-time favorite genres of music. Soooooo much creativity and feeling. I don't know if we will ever see anything like it again.

 

Yes indeed! It was a magical era, I feel so lucky to have been able to experience it and spend so many weekends travelling around the country to events and searching for records.

It’s being reissued on vinyl by the bucketload at the moment, it’s had a massive surge in popularity over the last few years.

 

I don’t even always know if something is AAA or not. I actually would have assumed the Grundman masters of the Pink Floyd albums were AAA, if I hadn’t been informed otherwise. Sounds good = sounds good.

 

100% right regarding the hoop-jumping!

More than three times the MSRP of 40 years ago, though? How much were new LPs selling for in 1980? If it was at least $5-6 (and I’m of the impression it was), pricing in 2021 is right in line, and possibly lower in some cases…

 

This is correct, when you compare the cost of a rekkid by cost-of-living-index factors.

But, compare an LP in 1984 ($9.98, or $8.98), with the price of a CD in 1984 ($15.99).

Nowadays, the same LP you could have bought for that price in 1984, is $30-40; the same CD is now $10.99 or budget-priced. And the CD is capable of producing better sound today because the A-to-D converters are better...so it's only a matter of, as Steverino has been saying for decades..."it's all in the master".

And, this same high quality master can be applied equally to a CD or an LP...only first, you have to roll-off frequencies on the LP to keep the stylus from jumping the track as well as the RIAA curve...and, you have to hope they don't produce a slab ovf vinyl so bad, Hoffman Boarders are reduced to quantifying the errors on a poll thread, rather than being able to actually do something about it.

 

I see people throw this $30+ price tag around lately on this forum… seriously, where are you people seeing new single LP releases sold for that much? I cannot remember the last time I paid more than $25, and $15-20 has been more typical.

Regarding the CD vs LP pricing… a couple of factors:

1) CDs were a price gouge at that time, supported in the market by novelty.
2) LP came back into a much lower-volume market than when it had initially been phased mostly out.

Again, I agree completely with your notion that paying this much money for something should just get you what you paid for without having to do QC after having paid the money. But I find nothing wrong with the dollar amounts themselves, which are, inflation of the US dollar taken into account, the same price or cheaper than they were in the ‘80s.

 

Most of the 180 gram reissues I have been buying -- whether rock or rap -- have been more than $30 with tax and such...

 

1) Walking into a Barnes & Noble, and seeing the price tags on what's been in my sister's collection for half a century.
2) Doing a random search on popular album titles of any given artist up to the point at which a CD was $15.99...then pricing the same title on vinyl just moments ago on Amazon.

But again, I am not comparing the price of what it costs to buy an album in "today's money"...I am comparing it to how much less it is to buy the same title today on CD, a medium where, at the beginning, was more expensive, although the CD sound quality has been improved, while the vinyl production quality has gone the other way.

If you "justify" an LP's increased price via inflation, the existence of a $10.99 CD, simply undermines that argument.

 

Would that be because a c.d costs pennies to manufacture?

 

Off-center, without a doubt!

 

I have all my record purchase go to my private mailbox service so they don’t spend time in a hot truck or on my porch. And I check in the tracking daily, you can’t be too careful!

 

True, when it comes to new vinyl. I own a few original Mercury Living Presence LP's with this defect, tough to take them back.

 

I’ll admit it’s been far too long since I walked into a Barnes & Noble. I have, however, bought quite a few LPs from their website, and none have been more than $25 for a single LP.

I also buy most of my LPs from Amazon (because it’s the easiest return policy…and that’s important with a lot of new vinyl records, for reasons discussed in this very thread…), and, again, I can’t remember the last time I bought a single LP that was more than $25 (or even as much as that from Amazon, really).

I might just like cheap music? I don’t know. It’s just a big disconnect between what I have experienced and what other people describe. I believe all of the new single LP releases I have bought within the past year have been under $20.

Back to LP vs CD and pricing, it seems to me CDs have become inexpensive for reasons that are independent of the pricing factors for present-day LPs. I’m certain some of it is a “what the market will bear” thing. The market will not bear CDs at a price equal to ‘80s-‘90s pricing adjusted for inflation, I suspect because the price was a ripoff then and people in this century have cheaper (or free!) digital music options.

And, again, I agree that, even at a $15-25 price, I shouldn’t have to file out the hole in a direction closer to centered or exchange three copies to finally get one that I couldn’t consider using to eat cereal… and you are correct that CDs likely have an almost-zero defect rate.

 

I think two courteous responses, re-stating my position, plus my logic, was enough, after having already addressed it the first time in Post #127, don't you?

 

They also sound far better than any US Harvest LP I’ve ever heard, except possibly Dark Side of the Moon. That one was recut for years by the same engineer (Wally Traugott) that did the first pressing, but the others were done as half-assed as usual for Capitol Records at that time.

 

Add to your poll “Record Haters”. You know the folks that got rid of their records when CD’s came out and now are high Rez and resentful that others love vinyl. They hate us for enjoying them and constantly come into every thread trying to discourage us and over exaggerate the click they heard at 16 because they never cleaned their records.

 

Has nothing to do whatsoever with the topic of the thread.

 

I’m suggesting that many of the listed “defects” of vinyl are blown out of proportion and over dramatized by some. So as I look at your list, I’m trying to define if any of these are happening at a high rate. How can I decide which is the most annoying to me. For me (at an average of 2.5 albums a month) each of these scenarios has happened at least once, and I returned to get a good copy. None of these have a high rate of happening compared to the vinyl I’ve bought. So from this list, none are the most annoying. What is the most annoying is over dramatizing their occurrence.. so I offered a suggestion of something that could be added. I do have friends who have not been as lucky as I have. Their rate of defect is higher. (I like punk music) Many of my friends who experience a high rate of defect, purchase punk low budget records from particular plants. Could be a coincidence.. or could be a connection.

 

I understand and you have a point about some of these being blown out of proportion. The thread is about when you encounter any of these defects, to name which one is the most annoying during the listening experience to you. So your suggestion of adding to the list doesn't make any sense at all.

 

Not a big deal for me to send a record back via mail or walk into my local and return. Both purchase formats take them back with no trouble. As to cost let’s really get into the knitty gritty. Say I have to spend $35 for a record I really want… IS IT REALLY EXPENSIVE? Here’s reality. I could spend that money on maybe a burger and one beer. I’d crap eventually and the burger and beer would leave me and be forgotten. But that entertainment of $35 will give me years and years of being able to put it on deck listen and enjoy. I’ll enjoy it possibly hundreds of times. My $35 was well spent truthfully. I can even share it with a few friends and have a conversational piece to talk about and bond over. The hamburger is gone.

 

Well it’s your thread, you started it, so it can fit your view of the subject. I guess I don’t have anything to add with those orange barrels on each side of the road, too restrictive for my journey. I’ll leave.

 

This thread is about weird things that are visually or aurally detected on an LP record. You're talking about adding *PEOPLE* to the list. How are people an LP defect? Is it that challenging to understand this basic premise?

One of the strangest exchanges I've had on this board, bar none. Reading is hard, I guess.